Tag: Working Women

This post was originally featured on , on March 17, 2017 9:37 am. You can read the original article here at http://victorianoccupations.co.uk/great-victorians/isabella-ormston-ford-1855-1924/

As well as writing about Victorian Occupations, I think its helpful to consider some of those great philanthropists who sought to help those working in the terrible conditions in which so many of the working classes found themselves. During the 19th Century, especially in the latter years, the concerns over sweating and the abuse… Read more »

This post was originally featured on , on February 24, 2017 10:51 am. You can read the original article here at http://victorianoccupations.co.uk/local-case-studies/the-tailoresses-of-rowhedge/

Rowhedge Rowhedge was, and still is, a small village on the banks of the River Colne in Essex. It is a place where for generations the men worked as fishermen, while the women stayed at home, holding together a family, a home, and in many cases also working. That it became a focus for… Read more »

This post was originally featured on , on February 22, 2017 2:48 pm. You can read the original article here at http://victorianoccupations.co.uk/c/c-crossing-sweeper/

Crossing Sweeper Continuing with the series on street life in Victorian London, the crossing sweeper was as much a part of this world as the costermongers, flower girls, mush-fakers, pure finders and the numerous other members of the London underclass. Roads and pathways were filthy, covered in mud, rotting vegetable matter and the ever… Read more »

This post was originally featured on , on February 20, 2017 11:43 am. You can read the original article here at http://victorianoccupations.co.uk/f/f-flower-seller/

Flower Sellers When we think of flower sellers, we often think of Eliza Doolittle, the flower seller in Covent Garden who went from rags to riches thanks to the attentions of Professor Higgins. Hers was of course just a story, but her trade was common, although her rise out of poverty was hardly in any… Read more »

This post was originally featured on , on March 10, 2016 2:49 pm. You can read the original article here at http://victorianoccupations.co.uk/uncategorized/j-is-for-jam-maker/

“Any adventurous jam-maker can be sure, by settling in London, of getting as many female workers as he likes for about 7s. a week – certainly not a subsistence wage in London; and having got them he may treat them pretty much as he likes. He may turn them off for weeks or months in slack times; they will be there as soon as he chooses to open his doors again. He may work them day and night in busy seasons until they are broken down with fatigue and sleeplessness; and they will agree with the law which says it is all right. He may work them under conditions fatal to health, and they will take it as all in the day’s work. The one thing which will never happen is that he should be ‘short of hands’”[1]

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries jam making was carried out across the country – everywhere from village kitchens employing one or two women producing small batches of jams and preserves from fruits in season, to the vast London and Liverpool based factories, each employing thousands of workers. Rapidly jam making became an occupation frequently reported as being problematic, both in terms of the wages being paid which were very low, but also as a dangerous environment, regularly appearing in the newspapers reporting deaths and serious injuries in the factories.

Jam makers were considered to be at the lower end of the working classes. They are regularly described in reports as being of a ‘rough’ nature, they needed to have no special skills or experience – simply to be able to work for long hours and strong enough to deal with the vats of fruit and vast, heavy jam pans or pallets of jars. Jam factories were taken to court for making women work overtime – as in the case of Messrs. Machonochie Brothers, who were summed to court for employing women after hours. Under the Factory Acts, women were not allowed to be employed after 9pm, however, Miss Deane, a Government inspector, visited the factory on August 5th 1898 and found three girls, one of which was only 14, working at 9.30pm, having been in work since 8am. The girl concerned had had an hour for dinner and another hour for tea, but was still washing bottles 13 hours after starting work that day. Surprisingly, the judge found in favour of the employers, suggesting that, “if workshops were carried out on the ideal plan suggested, businesses could not be carried on at a fair profit.”[2]In 1892 dozens of women employed at Pink’s jam factory held a strike at the reduction in their pay. Due to the surplus of women seeking employment and the lack of employment legislation to protect women in work, they were replaced immediately from the scores of women waiting at the gate in the hope of work.

Work in jam factories was seasonal and as such the factories worked extremely long hours in the fruiting season. Giving details of her factory duties, one elderly widow in Liverpool explained how:

“Oranges come in about Christmas, and marmalade making goes on till the end of March; rhubarb starts in May, followed by gooseberries and stone fruit. When the stone fruit is finished there is a week or two of pickling onions, but there is nothing from the beginning of October to Christmas.”[3]

During the slack time the widow explained that she had to take to charing – there was no work at the factory. Women working full time could expect to earn a full time wage of 10/- or 11/- a week when busy, but only 5/- a week during the quieter months, with one woman stating that she only earned 2/- a week off season.

Work in the jam factories was hard – it is named by Clementina Black as being one of the occupations for women which would be considered more dangerous than a housewife’s heavy load of washing and cleaning. “Some of them lifted pans of 56lbs weight, some washed bottles, some pulped fruit or stacked jars, or put fruit into bottles.”[4]The work carried out by the stackers and lifters was considered very heavy – the 56lb pans (converted to 25kg) would be considered over 9kg (19lb) heavier than can safely be carried by a woman at work today. This put an immense strain on the women, most of whom were under nourished, and frequently pregnant. All of the women questioned for Women’s Industrial Council worked in the factories through necessity – mostly due to being widowed, or their husbands being injured, sick, or unable to find regular work. None of the families were bringing in what would be considered at the time a subsistence wage, and, therefore, the physical condition of the women was argued to be weaker than the norm. Black herself questioned whether “the carrying or piling up of pans or trays weights half a hundred-weight each can be suitable for women who are expecting the birth of a child,”[5] and this seemed to be borne out in Liverpool where Ms Newcombe-Fox suggested that there appeared to be increased mortality among the children of jam makers – this being blamed on the mothers working to near their ‘time’, and the strain of the nature of the work.

Beyond the normal strains of working such long hours doing strenuous work, the factories could be, by their very nature, dangerous places to work. In 1893 the parents of Delilah Figgins, 15 years of age) insisted that their daughter’s death, 10 days after beginning work at Messrs. Pink in Bermondsey, was due to the insanitary conditions in which she was forced to work. She had complained, as had her sister, that the oranges she was sorting were frequently rotten, that the smell was appalling and that her hands were scratched and then soaked in the putrid liquid. Worse still, the girls were not allowed to leave the factory for their meal breaks, being forced to eat their meals surrounded by the rotting fruit. Whilst the coroner found that her death was due to septicaemia, most likely due to a bruise on her leg becoming infected, Pinks were informed that the work girls (over 600 of them) “should have their meals in another part of the building, as it was not a proper thing from a humane point of view for them to have their meals among the [rotting] oranges in their work-room.”[6]In 1895, Eliza Wrightly was killed at Pink’s, having fallen into a pan of boiling apples. Again, Pinks were instructed to create a safer working environment – the open pans of boiling fruit causing frequent injury, and asked to ensure that covers were placed over the pans to prevent further fatalities.[7] In 1900 Rosalie Reed was killed at Keiller’s Jam Factory. “In the course of her work at the factory, the girl had to pass along a gangway just by the side of which was a hole 10 feet wide and 24 feet deep. Into the hole the exhaust boiling water was allowed to run, and clouds of steam continually rose. There was, said several witnesses, no protection to the pit, and no light except a lantern. One evening the girl was missed. Nothing more was seen or heard of her until her body was found next day in the boiling water. A witness declared no fence was placed around the hole until two days after the accident.”[8]

With the combination of long hours, hard, heavy work, dangerous conditions and low wages jam making attracted women who needed work at any cost, and, as lamented by social commentators of the time, the conditions in which many worked worsened. Pinks were able to dismiss on the spot a large section of their finishing workforce who dared to strike as so many other women were willing to work for worsening pay in awful conditions.

It would be wrong of course to suggest that all jam manufactories were terrible and there were some notable exceptions. The work was always going to be hard, and the pay low, but some, like Wilkin and Son’s in Tiptree, and the Hartley factory in Aintree were bright airy places. Hartley’s made a point of inviting the press and the medical profession into their factories to show off their staff, the housing they provided and the conditions in which the fruit was grown and prepared – Sir James Barr, one of Liverpool’s most eminent physicians stated that “neither he, nor his professional friends would have any hesitation in eating any of the Hartley jam.”[9]

Ending on a happier note, having failed to convince their employers in 1892 of the injustice of falling wages, in 1911 the women of Pink’s factory joined with thousands of others to strike again, and this time they won:

“In the summer of 1911, 15,000 women in Bermondsey, South London came out on strike against low wages and bad working conditions in the district. Thirty firms, including a number of jam and biscuit factories, were affected by the strike. The National Federation of Women Workers moved all available staff into the area to help organise the women and the Women’s Trade Union League launched a financial appeal. Many concessions were obtained and at Pinks’ jam factory, the wage rose from 9 to 11 shillings per week”[10]

This post was originally featured on , on March 10, 2016 2:49 pm. You can read the original article here at http://victorianoccupations.co.uk/l/j-is-for-jam-maker/

“Any adventurous jam-maker can be sure, by settling in London, of getting as many female workers as he likes for about 7s. a week – certainly not a subsistence wage in London; and having got them he may treat them pretty much as he likes. He may turn them off for weeks or months in slack times; they will be there as soon as he chooses to open his doors again. He may work them day and night in busy seasons until they are broken down with fatigue and sleeplessness; and they will agree with the law which says it is all right. He may work them under conditions fatal to health, and they will take it as all in the day’s work. The one thing which will never happen is that he should be ‘short of hands’”[1]

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries jam making was carried out across the country – everywhere from village kitchens employing one or two women producing small batches of jams and preserves from fruits in season, to the vast London and Liverpool based factories, each employing thousands of workers. Rapidly jam making became an occupation frequently reported as being problematic, both in terms of the wages being paid which were very low, but also as a dangerous environment, regularly appearing in the newspapers reporting deaths and serious injuries in the factories.

Jam makers were considered to be at the lower end of the working classes. They are regularly described in reports as being of a ‘rough’ nature, they needed to have no special skills or experience – simply to be able to work for long hours and strong enough to deal with the vats of fruit and vast, heavy jam pans or pallets of jars. Jam factories were taken to court for making women work overtime – as in the case of Messrs. Machonochie Brothers, who were summed to court for employing women after hours. Under the Factory Acts, women were not allowed to be employed after 9pm, however, Miss Deane, a Government inspector, visited the factory on August 5th 1898 and found three girls, one of which was only 14, working at 9.30pm, having been in work since 8am. The girl concerned had had an hour for dinner and another hour for tea, but was still washing bottles 13 hours after starting work that day. Surprisingly, the judge found in favour of the employers, suggesting that, “if workshops were carried out on the ideal plan suggested, businesses could not be carried on at a fair profit.”[2]In 1892 dozens of women employed at Pink’s jam factory held a strike at the reduction in their pay. Due to the surplus of women seeking employment and the lack of employment legislation to protect women in work, they were replaced immediately from the scores of women waiting at the gate in the hope of work.

Work in jam factories was seasonal and as such the factories worked extremely long hours in the fruiting season. Giving details of her factory duties, one elderly widow in Liverpool explained how:

“Oranges come in about Christmas, and marmalade making goes on till the end of March; rhubarb starts in May, followed by gooseberries and stone fruit. When the stone fruit is finished there is a week or two of pickling onions, but there is nothing from the beginning of October to Christmas.”[3]

During the slack time the widow explained that she had to take to charing – there was no work at the factory. Women working full time could expect to earn a full time wage of 10/- or 11/- a week when busy, but only 5/- a week during the quieter months, with one woman stating that she only earned 2/- a week off season.

Work in the jam factories was hard – it is named by Clementina Black as being one of the occupations for women which would be considered more dangerous than a housewife’s heavy load of washing and cleaning. “Some of them lifted pans of 56lbs weight, some washed bottles, some pulped fruit or stacked jars, or put fruit into bottles.”[4]The work carried out by the stackers and lifters was considered very heavy – the 56lb pans (converted to 25kg) would be considered over 9kg (19lb) heavier than can safely be carried by a woman at work today. This put an immense strain on the women, most of whom were under nourished, and frequently pregnant. All of the women questioned for Women’s Industrial Council worked in the factories through necessity – mostly due to being widowed, or their husbands being injured, sick, or unable to find regular work. None of the families were bringing in what would be considered at the time a subsistence wage, and, therefore, the physical condition of the women was argued to be weaker than the norm. Black herself questioned whether “the carrying or piling up of pans or trays weights half a hundred-weight each can be suitable for women who are expecting the birth of a child,”[5] and this seemed to be borne out in Liverpool where Ms Newcombe-Fox suggested that there appeared to be increased mortality among the children of jam makers – this being blamed on the mothers working to near their ‘time’, and the strain of the nature of the work.

Beyond the normal strains of working such long hours doing strenuous work, the factories could be, by their very nature, dangerous places to work. In 1893 the parents of Delilah Figgins, 15 years of age) insisted that their daughter’s death, 10 days after beginning work at Messrs. Pink in Bermondsey, was due to the insanitary conditions in which she was forced to work. She had complained, as had her sister, that the oranges she was sorting were frequently rotten, that the smell was appalling and that her hands were scratched and then soaked in the putrid liquid. Worse still, the girls were not allowed to leave the factory for their meal breaks, being forced to eat their meals surrounded by the rotting fruit. Whilst the coroner found that her death was due to septicaemia, most likely due to a bruise on her leg becoming infected, Pinks were informed that the work girls (over 600 of them) “should have their meals in another part of the building, as it was not a proper thing from a humane point of view for them to have their meals among the [rotting] oranges in their work-room.”[6]In 1895, Eliza Wrightly was killed at Pink’s, having fallen into a pan of boiling apples. Again, Pinks were instructed to create a safer working environment – the open pans of boiling fruit causing frequent injury, and asked to ensure that covers were placed over the pans to prevent further fatalities.[7] In 1900 Rosalie Reed was killed at Keiller’s Jam Factory. “In the course of her work at the factory, the girl had to pass along a gangway just by the side of which was a hole 10 feet wide and 24 feet deep. Into the hole the exhaust boiling water was allowed to run, and clouds of steam continually rose. There was, said several witnesses, no protection to the pit, and no light except a lantern. One evening the girl was missed. Nothing more was seen or heard of her until her body was found next day in the boiling water. A witness declared no fence was placed around the hole until two days after the accident.”[8]

With the combination of long hours, hard, heavy work, dangerous conditions and low wages jam making attracted women who needed work at any cost, and, as lamented by social commentators of the time, the conditions in which many worked worsened. Pinks were able to dismiss on the spot a large section of their finishing workforce who dared to strike as so many other women were willing to work for worsening pay in awful conditions.

It would be wrong of course to suggest that all jam manufactories were terrible and there were some notable exceptions. The work was always going to be hard, and the pay low, but some, like Wilkin and Son’s in Tiptree, and the Hartley factory in Aintree were bright airy places. Hartley’s made a point of inviting the press and the medical profession into their factories to show off their staff, the housing they provided and the conditions in which the fruit was grown and prepared – Sir James Barr, one of Liverpool’s most eminent physicians stated that “neither he, nor his professional friends would have any hesitation in eating any of the Hartley jam.”[9]

Ending on a happier note, having failed to convince their employers in 1892 of the injustice of falling wages, in 1911 the women of Pink’s factory joined with thousands of others to strike again, and this time they won:

“In the summer of 1911, 15,000 women in Bermondsey, South London came out on strike against low wages and bad working conditions in the district. Thirty firms, including a number of jam and biscuit factories, were affected by the strike. The National Federation of Women Workers moved all available staff into the area to help organise the women and the Women’s Trade Union League launched a financial appeal. Many concessions were obtained and at Pinks’ jam factory, the wage rose from 9 to 11 shillings per week”[10]

This post was originally featured on , on March 4, 2016 4:42 pm. You can read the original article here at http://victorianoccupations.co.uk/uncategorized/i-is-for-ironer/

In 1901 over 180,000 women were recorded in the census as working in laundries as washerwomen, ironers and manglers. Every town and village had women working at laundries, small hand laundries existed by the thousands in large towns and the suburbs of London. Alongside these were homebased workers, and also the vast, steam driven laundries employing hundreds of women.

Unlike today with our automated laundry systems and electric irons with steam facilities, doing the laundry in the 19th century was hard physical work, and to do it correctly required skill. A report in The Pall Mall Gazette or 1890 describes how the process was being taught to fortunate young girls in a number of School Board Schools in London.

“Every girl of the right sort delights in a doll’s washing, and so it is little wonder that the large class-rooms at five different centres which serve pro tem as wash-houses and laundries become the school paradise and promotion to a laundry class is eagerly earned by good attendance and steady work… Twelve little irons have heating on gas stoves, and soon, three at a table, the little laundresses are smoothing, glazing and goffering. Little glossing-irons are produced, and such a gloss do collars and cuffs receive as shall astonish the proud fathers and brothers who are to wear them on the following Sunday.”[1]

Many books and newspapers carried advice on how to launder and iron – in many the advice is simply to take the ironing to a professional – “Laundry-work, like everything else, requires care, attention and neatness. Scorched linen and smutty collars, although too often seen where the washing is done at home, ought not to be, any more than at the large laundries where ironing is paid for by the article and everything badly ironed is returned by the manager to be redone.”[2]The author advises that: “The irons must be hot (yet not hot enough to scorch) and smooth. Some ironers stir the starch round with a wax candle when it is made, or put a scrap of butter in it to prevent the irons sticking; others rub the irons on the knife-board (dusting them afterwards) for the same purpose. But one great secret is to have bright, clean irons, and to starch the articles evenly – not ot have llumps of starch sticking here and there. Firm pressure upon the iron is necessary, and a good ironer knows how to fold each article neatly and daintily.”[3]

Ironing was a complicated, drawn out process – the irons needed to be heated on the stove taking care not to get smut and dirt on the hot plate, and then the clothes were pressed. An iron was not just an iron – there were multiple irons of different sizes for different jobs including the glossing-iron and for frills a goffering-iron.

Each needed heating, and then placing back on the stove to heat up again as they cooled – however, if the iron was too hot it would scorch and maintaining the heat meant standing alongside a stove – hot, physically demanding work. It was a job that required a great deal of experience and skill to do correctly, the little girls in the Board Schools were being prepared to care for their own homes and washing, but also to be able to work in the hand and steam laundries :

“Washing is carried on in low, ill-ventilated rooms, the walls and ceilings of which stream with moisture, the floors of which are broken and undrained, so that the workers stand in a slop of dirty water, while wet flannels dangle round their heads, and their cotton dresses are soaked with steam and perspiration. In another room, more often than not, built overhead, the ironers ply their work around a gas-stove radiating noxious fumes, while the heat draws a damp steam up through the boards. The ironers literally drip with heat, and towards night-time their failing strength is stimulated by draughts of beer, which, bought wholesale and retailed, yields a profit to the employer. Even in well-managed laundries, the workers often take their meals sitting on turned-up pails with their feet in the water.”[4]

Not only were the conditions the women were working in appalling, the hours worked were described as ‘murderous’. Writing in 1896 Miss March Phillips, creating a report on Women’s Industrial Life, wrote that Monday was frequently a short day for ironers – the washing needed to be washed first after all, but on Tuesday through to Friday most would work until 11 or 12 at night, frequently later still in the season. It was suggested that it was nothing unusual to finish work at around 3am on a Saturday morning, sleep for a few hours, and then begin again at 8am working though until Saturday afternoon.[5] The work was dangerous, the machinery used could result in fatal injuries and was frequently insufficiently fenced, and sanitary conditions were found to be very poor in many instances. In 1894, The report on the employment of women, by the Lady Assistant Commissioners, described ironers were the best paid workers in commercial laundries, and how women with children preferred to work in hand laundries as these were generally not requiring ironers to work on a Monday, thus giving them a free day to tend to their households. Jessie Boucherett, the author of the report suggested that this was not a job for young girls, the heat in the ironing room which frequently reached 80-100 degrees was simply too much for them, not to mention the skill required to ‘get up’ (press) the more complicated garments – petticoats, ruffled shirts etc – was beyond their experience.

Ironing then was a job for experienced, older women, who were paid the best wages in the laundry. Charles Booth states that while “women at the tub received from 2s to 3s a day… shirt and collar ironers earn from 8s to 15s a week according to capacity, and work from four to six days… Shirt and collar ironers who do clean work for shirt and collar warehouses are better paid. The work must be done well, and 4s to 5s a day can be earned.”[6]This certainly compared favourably with the wages for laundresses in general – girls of 15 were expected to work for 70 to 80 hours a weeks for 5s in many instances.

Clementina Black, however, suggested that the wages were getting lower by the early years of the twentieth century and following interviews with over 60 women she found that many were on a lower wage than Booth suggested. She illustrates the home life of these women, and paints a picture of abject poverty, in many instances the women working to support a sick husband, the children sick themselves and the mothers struggling to find childcare to support her while she went to work.

“Case No. 60 was that of a woman with a consumptive husband and five children ranging from 16 years to 9 months old. The occupied at a rent of 6/6 a top flat of two rooms in the neighbourhood of one of the great markets. The buildings were, in the investigator’s words, “tucked away down a long passage, each block with a separate staircase leading off – dirty and, I should think, dangerous in case of fire. The postman I asked for directions, who said he had been in the district for 18 years, declared there were no such buildings”. The wife, who went out to her work, earned, at the highest, 14/- a week, but some weeks only 7/- or 8/-… Two of the younger children were very delicate, and these remained at home in the care of the consumptive father, who could only go out ot work in warm weather. It was his custom to go hopping – always to the same farm – every year, and he was paid £1 a week. The whole family accompanied him, and the wife reported of the previous autumn’s migration that it “quite set her up” for the winter. It seems difficult to believe, however, that four or five weeks in the fresh and healthy air of a hop garden could do away with the effects upon the babies’ health of weeks and weeks shut up in the society of a father possessing but half a lung. The poor fellow was a devoted parent, who among other services cooked midday meals for all his children. But what must have been his reflections during the long hours of tendance upon a pair of tiny, weakly children whose chances of life his very presence was diminishing.”[7]

This family were not alone in their struggles – ironing, while better paid that general laundry, simply could not pay enough to provide even a basic standard of living for a family where the father was either sick, had died or had deserted. The hours worked and the wages paid caused frequent calls for laundries to come under the Factory Act, thus reducing hours and improving safety. This campaign, however, although called for in many circles, was argued in 1893 to be overlooking: “the danger and injustice of legislation which puts grown-up women on the level of “young persons and children”, and so lowers the market value of their labour. Too many of the well intended, but unjust restrictions of women’s hours of work have put them out of trades where wages were good and the work not unsuitable.”[8] The article goes on to quote an extract from the Laundry Journal:

“ Perhaps the most ticklish question of all is that of overtime. Now overtime, under the Act is a difficult matter to deal with, as it will mainly affect the ironers, practically all of the young persons and women. How hardly the matter of overtime may bear on a trade is vividly illustrated by the labour dispute at the Lower Croft Bleach Works, Bury. It seems that the work at the Lower Croft is mainly of the fancy goods description, necessitating a rush of work at certain seasons. Overtime is absolutely necessary. But the Bleach Works are under the provisions of the Factory Act, and the overtime clauses must not be evaded. Consequently at the Lower Croft boys and women were dispensed with, and the light labour given to old men and cripples, men who were not able to do hard work and earn full wages, but who were glad to do the light labour of the boys and women for the same wages these would have received.”

Ironing then was a job carried out by tens of thousands of women across Britain, hot, exhausting work in dangerous conditions which paid very little for the skill required. They were arguably at the top of the laundry pile so to speak – but their lives were hard, and their work harder.

This post was originally featured on , on March 4, 2016 4:42 pm. You can read the original article here at http://victorianoccupations.co.uk/i/i-is-for-ironer/

In 1901 over 180,000 women were recorded in the census as working in laundries as washerwomen, ironers and manglers. Every town and village had women working at laundries, small hand laundries existed by the thousands in large towns and the suburbs of London. Alongside these were homebased workers, and also the vast, steam driven laundries employing hundreds of women.

Unlike today with our automated laundry systems and electric irons with steam facilities, doing the laundry in the 19th century was hard physical work, and to do it correctly required skill. A report in The Pall Mall Gazette or 1890 describes how the process was being taught to fortunate young girls in a number of School Board Schools in London.

“Every girl of the right sort delights in a doll’s washing, and so it is little wonder that the large class-rooms at five different centres which serve pro tem as wash-houses and laundries become the school paradise and promotion to a laundry class is eagerly earned by good attendance and steady work… Twelve little irons have heating on gas stoves, and soon, three at a table, the little laundresses are smoothing, glazing and goffering. Little glossing-irons are produced, and such a gloss do collars and cuffs receive as shall astonish the proud fathers and brothers who are to wear them on the following Sunday.”[1]

Many books and newspapers carried advice on how to launder and iron – in many the advice is simply to take the ironing to a professional – “Laundry-work, like everything else, requires care, attention and neatness. Scorched linen and smutty collars, although too often seen where the washing is done at home, ought not to be, any more than at the large laundries where ironing is paid for by the article and everything badly ironed is returned by the manager to be redone.”[2]The author advises that: “The irons must be hot (yet not hot enough to scorch) and smooth. Some ironers stir the starch round with a wax candle when it is made, or put a scrap of butter in it to prevent the irons sticking; others rub the irons on the knife-board (dusting them afterwards) for the same purpose. But one great secret is to have bright, clean irons, and to starch the articles evenly – not ot have llumps of starch sticking here and there. Firm pressure upon the iron is necessary, and a good ironer knows how to fold each article neatly and daintily.”[3]

Ironing was a complicated, drawn out process – the irons needed to be heated on the stove taking care not to get smut and dirt on the hot plate, and then the clothes were pressed. An iron was not just an iron – there were multiple irons of different sizes for different jobs including the glossing-iron and for frills a goffering-iron.

Each needed heating, and then placing back on the stove to heat up again as they cooled – however, if the iron was too hot it would scorch and maintaining the heat meant standing alongside a stove – hot, physically demanding work. It was a job that required a great deal of experience and skill to do correctly, the little girls in the Board Schools were being prepared to care for their own homes and washing, but also to be able to work in the hand and steam laundries :

“Washing is carried on in low, ill-ventilated rooms, the walls and ceilings of which stream with moisture, the floors of which are broken and undrained, so that the workers stand in a slop of dirty water, while wet flannels dangle round their heads, and their cotton dresses are soaked with steam and perspiration. In another room, more often than not, built overhead, the ironers ply their work around a gas-stove radiating noxious fumes, while the heat draws a damp steam up through the boards. The ironers literally drip with heat, and towards night-time their failing strength is stimulated by draughts of beer, which, bought wholesale and retailed, yields a profit to the employer. Even in well-managed laundries, the workers often take their meals sitting on turned-up pails with their feet in the water.”[4]

Not only were the conditions the women were working in appalling, the hours worked were described as ‘murderous’. Writing in 1896 Miss March Phillips, creating a report on Women’s Industrial Life, wrote that Monday was frequently a short day for ironers – the washing needed to be washed first after all, but on Tuesday through to Friday most would work until 11 or 12 at night, frequently later still in the season. It was suggested that it was nothing unusual to finish work at around 3am on a Saturday morning, sleep for a few hours, and then begin again at 8am working though until Saturday afternoon.[5] The work was dangerous, the machinery used could result in fatal injuries and was frequently insufficiently fenced, and sanitary conditions were found to be very poor in many instances. In 1894, The report on the employment of women, by the Lady Assistant Commissioners, described ironers were the best paid workers in commercial laundries, and how women with children preferred to work in hand laundries as these were generally not requiring ironers to work on a Monday, thus giving them a free day to tend to their households. Jessie Boucherett, the author of the report suggested that this was not a job for young girls, the heat in the ironing room which frequently reached 80-100 degrees was simply too much for them, not to mention the skill required to ‘get up’ (press) the more complicated garments – petticoats, ruffled shirts etc – was beyond their experience.

Ironing then was a job for experienced, older women, who were paid the best wages in the laundry. Charles Booth states that while “women at the tub received from 2s to 3s a day… shirt and collar ironers earn from 8s to 15s a week according to capacity, and work from four to six days… Shirt and collar ironers who do clean work for shirt and collar warehouses are better paid. The work must be done well, and 4s to 5s a day can be earned.”[6]This certainly compared favourably with the wages for laundresses in general – girls of 15 were expected to work for 70 to 80 hours a weeks for 5s in many instances.

Clementina Black, however, suggested that the wages were getting lower by the early years of the twentieth century and following interviews with over 60 women she found that many were on a lower wage than Booth suggested. She illustrates the home life of these women, and paints a picture of abject poverty, in many instances the women working to support a sick husband, the children sick themselves and the mothers struggling to find childcare to support her while she went to work.

“Case No. 60 was that of a woman with a consumptive husband and five children ranging from 16 years to 9 months old. The occupied at a rent of 6/6 a top flat of two rooms in the neighbourhood of one of the great markets. The buildings were, in the investigator’s words, “tucked away down a long passage, each block with a separate staircase leading off – dirty and, I should think, dangerous in case of fire. The postman I asked for directions, who said he had been in the district for 18 years, declared there were no such buildings”. The wife, who went out to her work, earned, at the highest, 14/- a week, but some weeks only 7/- or 8/-… Two of the younger children were very delicate, and these remained at home in the care of the consumptive father, who could only go out ot work in warm weather. It was his custom to go hopping – always to the same farm – every year, and he was paid £1 a week. The whole family accompanied him, and the wife reported of the previous autumn’s migration that it “quite set her up” for the winter. It seems difficult to believe, however, that four or five weeks in the fresh and healthy air of a hop garden could do away with the effects upon the babies’ health of weeks and weeks shut up in the society of a father possessing but half a lung. The poor fellow was a devoted parent, who among other services cooked midday meals for all his children. But what must have been his reflections during the long hours of tendance upon a pair of tiny, weakly children whose chances of life his very presence was diminishing.”[7]

This family were not alone in their struggles – ironing, while better paid that general laundry, simply could not pay enough to provide even a basic standard of living for a family where the father was either sick, had died or had deserted. The hours worked and the wages paid caused frequent calls for laundries to come under the Factory Act, thus reducing hours and improving safety. This campaign, however, although called for in many circles, was argued in 1893 to be overlooking: “the danger and injustice of legislation which puts grown-up women on the level of “young persons and children”, and so lowers the market value of their labour. Too many of the well intended, but unjust restrictions of women’s hours of work have put them out of trades where wages were good and the work not unsuitable.”[8] The article goes on to quote an extract from the Laundry Journal:

“ Perhaps the most ticklish question of all is that of overtime. Now overtime, under the Act is a difficult matter to deal with, as it will mainly affect the ironers, practically all of the young persons and women. How hardly the matter of overtime may bear on a trade is vividly illustrated by the labour dispute at the Lower Croft Bleach Works, Bury. It seems that the work at the Lower Croft is mainly of the fancy goods description, necessitating a rush of work at certain seasons. Overtime is absolutely necessary. But the Bleach Works are under the provisions of the Factory Act, and the overtime clauses must not be evaded. Consequently at the Lower Croft boys and women were dispensed with, and the light labour given to old men and cripples, men who were not able to do hard work and earn full wages, but who were glad to do the light labour of the boys and women for the same wages these would have received.”

Ironing then was a job carried out by tens of thousands of women across Britain, hot, exhausting work in dangerous conditions which paid very little for the skill required. They were arguably at the top of the laundry pile so to speak – but their lives were hard, and their work harder.

This post was originally featured on , on July 31, 2013 12:33 pm. You can read the original article here at http://victorianoccupations.co.uk/uncategorized/b-is-for-bootmakers/

B is a tricky one, there are so many Bs showing up as occupations for married women in the census; these are the Bs from just one single enumeration district in Bethnal Green:

Backgammon Table Maker

Bag Maker

Baker

Baking Powder Packer

Barmaid

Basket Maker

Bead Embroiderer

Bead Trimmer

Bobbin Winder

Bonbon Maker

Bonnet Maker

Book Binder

Book Filler

Book Folder

Book Sewer

Boot Lining Maker

Boot Machinist

Boot Maker

Boot Polisher

Boot Tacker

Boot Trimmer

Bottle Labeller

Bottle Packer

Box Maker

Braid Machinist

Braider

Broad Weaver

Brush Drawer

Brush Maker

Bugle Trimmer

Butcher

Button Hole Maker

Button Maker

As you can see, there are a vast array of occupations I could look at for B in my A-Z, as opposed to the As for the same enumeration district which were Apprentice and Artificial Flower Maker (of course, there are far more than that in reality when looking further afield, Actress comes up – surprisingly – with great regularity). I decided to write about the occupation group in which the greatest number of women were employed in my samples, and that was those working in boot manufacture (a close run thing with book folding).

Bootmaking was such a huge part of the Victorian economic structure that Charles Booth dedicated an entire section of Life and Labour of the People in London to a discussion regarding the ways in which the trade had developed and changed over the preceding 25-30 years, the working patterns of those involved in the trade, and the problems faced by men and women alike in a rapidly evolving sector of the clothing industry.[1]

One of the biggest issues faced by our bootmaking ladies was a drop in payment rates over a very short period of time. Whereas, previously, bootmaking had been a specialist trade carried out by artisans in small workshops and mainly by hand, by the latter quarter of the nineteenth century most boots were made by machine to a standard last (the wooden or metal ‘foot’ used to size shoes), rather than being made to measure for each customer. It should be noted that we mustn’t confuse ‘machine’ with our current understanding of factory work; each process was still carried out by hand at this time in the majority of cases, but machines were involved in the sewing and finishing of the boots and shoes, thus cutting down on the time take to hand sew every upper, and to then sew it to every sole.

Booth, however, points out that for some in the trade the mechanisation of bootmaking was a positive thing. He notes, whereas in the mid 1800’s a family could not earn more than £1 a week bootmaking sewing by hand, the introduction of the sewing machine greatly reduced the price per pair of boots, but the bootmaker could make far more pairs per day.[2] This was of great advantage to the owners of the growing bootmaking companies, but the profits were not always passed down to the employees.

Even within ‘boot making’ there are several different trades, and many different ways in which a woman could have been working. Put very basically this comes down to home-work (most favoured by the married women) and factory work. By the 1880s most boots were made in factories, and many of the women recorded in the census as working in the boot trade were employed by factories. The areas in which women tended to do most of the work were fitting (pasting the pieces of the boot together in preparation for sewing), machining, button-holing and finishing (otherwise known as table hands) and these are the main boot making occupations seen in the list above (sometimes under slightly different names as given in the householder schedule).[3] It may seem surprising that so much of the work of the bootmaker was carried out by women, but as Booth points out, ‘Male labour is too costly a luxury to be employed by the manufacturer when he can get the work done well enough for his purposes by women willing to accept wages much lower than those demanded by men.’[4]

Wages varied greatly depending on the employer, the time of year (boot and shoe making, whilst not so seasonal as many of the other trades, was still quieter at times, the busiest months being from the middle of February until the middle of July), and the experience of the woman herself. Top class machinists in the late 1880s would earn in the region of 18s a week to 22s (if they were exceptional), whereas those who were still learning their trade could only expect to earn 14-16s a week. Apprentices worked for nothing for the first three months of their time with a company, and they would then rise very slowly from 2s-3s a week, up to a staggering 7s a week when they were at the end of their three years of apprenticeship. The other female workers were on lower rates, button-hole makers could sometimes make up to 18s a week, trimmers on average 10s-12s, whilst the room-girls – young girls employed to fetch and carry, on 2s 6d.[5]

The hours of the women employed in the manufactories were not so long as those found in other occupations, indeed, by Victorian standards they were quite reasonable – a woman only expected to work from around 8am to 7pm Monday to Friday and a nice half day of 8am to 2pm on a Saturday – the overtime could be problematic, increasing their hours into the night on occasion, but still, bootmaking was seen as a relatively genteel occupation for a woman.

Certainly by the last years of the nineteenth century most women were employed by factories, and very few independent bootmaking families remained in business, but this didn’t mean that they were all actually working in a factory environment. Bootmaking was another one of the trades in which most of the work was still carried out at home. Then, as now, premises were expensive and added to the cost of the product, it made far more sense to ship out most of the finishing and stitching work to women in their own homes. Indeed, some of these women made their own little manufactories in their living rooms, employing friends, daughters and neighbours to come and carry out the work. Booth offers some examples of the experiences of these women, and the money they were able to earn. Below is the profit and loss account for a mother working in her own home, in possession of three machines, one of which she works, in May of c1890:[6]

Gross Receipts

£2. 15s. 5 ½d

£ s d

£ s d

Expenses.

Wages:

1 fitter

0 13 0

1 Machinist (improver)

0 9 0

1 Machinist (daughter)

0 6 0

1 shop-girl (table-hand and room-girl)

0 8 0

Grindery and repairs to machines

1 16 0

Rent

0 9 0

Light

0 3 0

Railway fares of shop-girltaking work to warehouse

0 0 6

Total

2 8 10

£ s d

Gross Receipts

2 15 5 ½

Expenses

2 8 10

Nett Earnings

0 6 7 ½

So it can be seen that the woman who took in bootmaking and employed her daughter, a neighbour and a shop-girl earned less than the shop-girl by the time she had paid for the repairs to her machines and all of their wages. This was not always a profitable exercise.

Clementina Black also writes about the problems facing home-workers, which, it must be stressed, made up the majority of women working the trade. By the end of the nineteenth century she explains how the normal payment for soling babies’ leather boots has dropped to 8d a dozen pairs (so 24 little boots for 8p), as opposed to the 1/- a dozen which had been the norm in previous years. Not only this, but many women were employed purely on piece work, and not on any form of permanent contract, so rather than being assured of work on a regular basis, they would have to walk from factory to factory to try and seek out some work to carry out. The plight of Mrs. W, a married mother of five small children, is pointed out by Black:

‘when visited she was busy upon babies’ shoes of blue ribbed silk; she stitched on the soles by hand, an operation always performed inside out, and necessitating the turning of the shoe to its right sided afterwards; then she pasted and inserted the stiffening at the heel, and finished off the inside. She was paid 1/- per dozen pairs, and could not do more than three dozen in a day, even if she sat at work from 9 to 11 or 11.30. One evening her husband timed her unawares, and reported that she had earned 2d. an hour – presumably four shoes. At that rate she would have taken 18 hours to do the 72 that she described as barely possible between 9 and 11.30.’[7]

Black goes on to explain how Mrs W’s fares for collects her work amounted to 9d. per week, and that she also had to provide her own thread, paste and needles, frequently using half a penny’s worth of needles per dozen pairs. Even with her husband working, having a lodger and taking in washing (when did she have the time?) Mr and Mrs W still could only scrape together 30s a week, not enough to live on, Mrs W working to within a few hours of the birth of her most recent baby, and being back at work within six days, propped up in bed with pillows to try and make ends meet.[8]

When we consider that, according to the 1881 census of England and Wales, just in the borough of Bethnal Green and Shoreditch alone, over 2600 women were occupied in the boot trade, we can see that a vast number of women were living and working in these conditions, sewing, cutting or pasting for over 12 hours a day, sometimes up to 18 hours, for these rates of pay. And bootmaking was a ‘good’ occupation choice!

[1] C. Booth, Life and Labour of the People in London: The Trades of East London, (London, Macmillan and Co., 1893), pp.69-137.

This post was originally featured on , on July 31, 2013 12:33 pm. You can read the original article here at http://victorianoccupations.co.uk/b/b-is-for-bootmakers/

B is a tricky one, there are so many Bs showing up as occupations for married women in the census; these are the Bs from just one single enumeration district in Bethnal Green:

Backgammon Table Maker

Bag Maker

Baker

Baking Powder Packer

Barmaid

Basket Maker

Bead Embroiderer

Bead Trimmer

Bobbin Winder

Bonbon Maker

Bonnet Maker

Book Binder

Book Filler

Book Folder

Book Sewer

Boot Lining Maker

Boot Machinist

Boot Maker

Boot Polisher

Boot Tacker

Boot Trimmer

Bottle Labeller

Bottle Packer

Box Maker

Braid Machinist

Braider

Broad Weaver

Brush Drawer

Brush Maker

Bugle Trimmer

Butcher

Button Hole Maker

Button Maker

As you can see, there are a vast array of occupations I could look at for B in my A-Z, as opposed to the As for the same enumeration district which were Apprentice and Artificial Flower Maker (of course, there are far more than that in reality when looking further afield, Actress comes up – surprisingly – with great regularity). I decided to write about the occupation group in which the greatest number of women were employed in my samples, and that was those working in boot manufacture (a close run thing with book folding).

Bootmaking was such a huge part of the Victorian economic structure that Charles Booth dedicated an entire section of Life and Labour of the People in London to a discussion regarding the ways in which the trade had developed and changed over the preceding 25-30 years, the working patterns of those involved in the trade, and the problems faced by men and women alike in a rapidly evolving sector of the clothing industry.[1]

One of the biggest issues faced by our bootmaking ladies was a drop in payment rates over a very short period of time. Whereas, previously, bootmaking had been a specialist trade carried out by artisans in small workshops and mainly by hand, by the latter quarter of the nineteenth century most boots were made by machine to a standard last (the wooden or metal ‘foot’ used to size shoes), rather than being made to measure for each customer. It should be noted that we mustn’t confuse ‘machine’ with our current understanding of factory work; each process was still carried out by hand at this time in the majority of cases, but machines were involved in the sewing and finishing of the boots and shoes, thus cutting down on the time take to hand sew every upper, and to then sew it to every sole.

Booth, however, points out that for some in the trade the mechanisation of bootmaking was a positive thing. He notes, whereas in the mid 1800’s a family could not earn more than £1 a week bootmaking sewing by hand, the introduction of the sewing machine greatly reduced the price per pair of boots, but the bootmaker could make far more pairs per day.[2] This was of great advantage to the owners of the growing bootmaking companies, but the profits were not always passed down to the employees.

Even within ‘boot making’ there are several different trades, and many different ways in which a woman could have been working. Put very basically this comes down to home-work (most favoured by the married women) and factory work. By the 1880s most boots were made in factories, and many of the women recorded in the census as working in the boot trade were employed by factories. The areas in which women tended to do most of the work were fitting (pasting the pieces of the boot together in preparation for sewing), machining, button-holing and finishing (otherwise known as table hands) and these are the main boot making occupations seen in the list above (sometimes under slightly different names as given in the householder schedule).[3] It may seem surprising that so much of the work of the bootmaker was carried out by women, but as Booth points out, ‘Male labour is too costly a luxury to be employed by the manufacturer when he can get the work done well enough for his purposes by women willing to accept wages much lower than those demanded by men.’[4]

Wages varied greatly depending on the employer, the time of year (boot and shoe making, whilst not so seasonal as many of the other trades, was still quieter at times, the busiest months being from the middle of February until the middle of July), and the experience of the woman herself. Top class machinists in the late 1880s would earn in the region of 18s a week to 22s (if they were exceptional), whereas those who were still learning their trade could only expect to earn 14-16s a week. Apprentices worked for nothing for the first three months of their time with a company, and they would then rise very slowly from 2s-3s a week, up to a staggering 7s a week when they were at the end of their three years of apprenticeship. The other female workers were on lower rates, button-hole makers could sometimes make up to 18s a week, trimmers on average 10s-12s, whilst the room-girls – young girls employed to fetch and carry, on 2s 6d.[5]

The hours of the women employed in the manufactories were not so long as those found in other occupations, indeed, by Victorian standards they were quite reasonable – a woman only expected to work from around 8am to 7pm Monday to Friday and a nice half day of 8am to 2pm on a Saturday – the overtime could be problematic, increasing their hours into the night on occasion, but still, bootmaking was seen as a relatively genteel occupation for a woman.

Certainly by the last years of the nineteenth century most women were employed by factories, and very few independent bootmaking families remained in business, but this didn’t mean that they were all actually working in a factory environment. Bootmaking was another one of the trades in which most of the work was still carried out at home. Then, as now, premises were expensive and added to the cost of the product, it made far more sense to ship out most of the finishing and stitching work to women in their own homes. Indeed, some of these women made their own little manufactories in their living rooms, employing friends, daughters and neighbours to come and carry out the work. Booth offers some examples of the experiences of these women, and the money they were able to earn. Below is the profit and loss account for a mother working in her own home, in possession of three machines, one of which she works, in May of c1890:[6]

Gross Receipts

£2. 15s. 5 ½d

£ s d

£ s d

Expenses.

Wages:

1 fitter

0 13 0

1 Machinist (improver)

0 9 0

1 Machinist (daughter)

0 6 0

1 shop-girl (table-hand and room-girl)

0 8 0

Grindery and repairs to machines

1 16 0

Rent

0 9 0

Light

0 3 0

Railway fares of shop-girltaking work to warehouse

0 0 6

Total

2 8 10

£ s d

Gross Receipts

2 15 5 ½

Expenses

2 8 10

Nett Earnings

0 6 7 ½

So it can be seen that the woman who took in bootmaking and employed her daughter, a neighbour and a shop-girl earned less than the shop-girl by the time she had paid for the repairs to her machines and all of their wages. This was not always a profitable exercise.

Clementina Black also writes about the problems facing home-workers, which, it must be stressed, made up the majority of women working the trade. By the end of the nineteenth century she explains how the normal payment for soling babies’ leather boots has dropped to 8d a dozen pairs (so 24 little boots for 8p), as opposed to the 1/- a dozen which had been the norm in previous years. Not only this, but many women were employed purely on piece work, and not on any form of permanent contract, so rather than being assured of work on a regular basis, they would have to walk from factory to factory to try and seek out some work to carry out. The plight of Mrs. W, a married mother of five small children, is pointed out by Black:

‘when visited she was busy upon babies’ shoes of blue ribbed silk; she stitched on the soles by hand, an operation always performed inside out, and necessitating the turning of the shoe to its right sided afterwards; then she pasted and inserted the stiffening at the heel, and finished off the inside. She was paid 1/- per dozen pairs, and could not do more than three dozen in a day, even if she sat at work from 9 to 11 or 11.30. One evening her husband timed her unawares, and reported that she had earned 2d. an hour – presumably four shoes. At that rate she would have taken 18 hours to do the 72 that she described as barely possible between 9 and 11.30.’[7]

Black goes on to explain how Mrs W’s fares for collects her work amounted to 9d. per week, and that she also had to provide her own thread, paste and needles, frequently using half a penny’s worth of needles per dozen pairs. Even with her husband working, having a lodger and taking in washing (when did she have the time?) Mr and Mrs W still could only scrape together 30s a week, not enough to live on, Mrs W working to within a few hours of the birth of her most recent baby, and being back at work within six days, propped up in bed with pillows to try and make ends meet.[8]

When we consider that, according to the 1881 census of England and Wales, just in the borough of Bethnal Green and Shoreditch alone, over 2600 women were occupied in the boot trade, we can see that a vast number of women were living and working in these conditions, sewing, cutting or pasting for over 12 hours a day, sometimes up to 18 hours, for these rates of pay. And bootmaking was a ‘good’ occupation choice!

[1] C. Booth, Life and Labour of the People in London: The Trades of East London, (London, Macmillan and Co., 1893), pp.69-137.